When I was a child, I loved climbing trees

but I was small and couldn't reach some limbs.

My mother said she wouldn't lift me up--

I had to figure it out myself.

She was old and her limbs reached far

but no matter how much I cried

her days of tree climbing were behind her.

Now I climb until the branches can no longer support my weight.

Five, ten feet from the sun.

I am not Icarus.

Mother taught me that if I knew how I climbed up,

I knew how to climb down.

I do not fall.

Still, I wonder--is this what other planets, species, aliens, think?

They leave us to make our own way to the stars so that

we do not burn.

Is that why God lets us fight and struggle against each other?

The scratches on our legs are from bark, but every dead cells was once a living being.

We will climb down and start again.

We are not Icarus. We do not fall.